Master of Puppets
by Swamy
Summary: Good intentions pave the road to hell. [cover by alla-matta]


Note: First of all, a little warning… if you're an Elena fan you might want to stay away from this; if you trust me and want to give it a try it's at your own risk. The song I used at the end of this fiction is "The Highest Cost" by Son of Rust. As usual, thanks to my beta _Syeira Lei,_ she's always ready to help me out and so fast in doing so, I can never thank her enough.

###

Her dark eyelashes flutter up, moving like the wings of a newborn butterfly. She knows where she is as much as she knew what she was doing and there is no going back now.

The light of the sunrise gives the room a dreamy glow, if she feels the urge to, she can still pretend this has not really happened, but she's not that kind of girl. She will bear the weight of her choice and see the end of this, whatever it might be.

Bonnie pushes back embarrassment – which burns on her cheeks more than guilt – back down in her throat and turns to lay on the side. He's right next to her, in the same position he has when sleep won her over, and in this light his beautiful profile, the softness of his impossibly pink lips make her heart ache a little. And it races.

She slides towards him, so close that she can smell the fragrance of his skin mixed with the liqueur they shared last night. She pushes her hair back from her face, letting her eyes travel along the lines of his perfectly chiseled chest, down the muscles of his pelvis. His morning erection is barely covered by the sheet they lay under.

She turns on her back, takes a breath counting the steps outside his room and when she opens the door of his the bedroom without knocking, wearing an outraged expression at her sight, Bonnie sits up to look into her eyes, lost for a moment.

Bonnie gasps, she brings one arm to her chest, to cover her heavy breasts, her flesh spilling through her little hand. Her chocolate curls fall around her face, on her naked shoulders and she can't say a word.

"How could you?" it's barely a whisper but it wakes Stefan from his sleep.

"What are you doing?" he asks rubbing his face with his right hand. At his side, thigh brushing, there is Bonnie. Naked from waist up. But judging from the fact that her panties lay on the floor of his bedroom he's quite sure she's equally naked from the waist down, too.

"You ask _me_ what I'm doing?" her brown eyes glitter with tears as she looks at her past lover and Bonnie takes the clue, slipping out of Stefan's bed. She pulls at the sheet, wrapping herself in it and making a poor job to hide her curves.

"I'm so sorry you found out like this," Bonnie tells Elena with her best comforting tone. She's mastered that tone through years and years of being her shadow.

"Oh, so you're only sorry about the way I found out?" she's trembling from rage and pain and she looks paler than usual. Well, disappointment _can't_ kill her, can it?

Bonnie reaches out to touch her but her friend takes a step back.

"I can't believe you did this to me," she accuses her, her voice broken, her cheek wet.

Bonnie looks confused, her eyes turn to Stefan, then back at her, reminding her "You're with Damon now," _and you have no right to be mad about this_. She doesn't say it but it's implied, and Elena sobers up immediately, caught on her contradiction, on her egoism, on her choice.

We all have to bear our choices, Bonnie thinks with a hint of something which tastes a lot like power.

"We didn't mean to hurt you," she explains, "It's just that…we all do our best to fill the emptiness we have to deal with," she adds.

"Oh, I bet he filled yours just fine," Elena spits, before she can control herself. She's humiliating herself, but she still can't stop. Bonnie knows that.

The other girl blinks, and does her best not to grin but lets her hold on the front loosen up just enough that Elena can glimpse at her dark nipple.

"My… _core _felt full all night long."

Elena shakes her head, her perfectly straight hair moving like a heavy curtain before she rushes out of the room like she can't breathe.

When the door shuts behind her Bonnie covers her face with both hands before turning to Stefan with glistening eyes.

"It's all my fault," she offers with a sad smile and he's in front of her in a flash. Nothing less of a gentleman, even when naked and with a hard on.

He takes her face in his large hands, and look at her with tender concern.

"It's not," he tells her, caressing her cheek with a circular movement of his thumb, "Whatever happened last night, it's on me too. You did nothing wrong," he assures her, holding her to him. The sheet falls with the motion and gets stuck in the pressing of their laps.

This close, he hushes her and lulls her, caressing her bare back, pressing his fingertips to the curve of her spine. She gasps against him, he can feel a sudden desire sparking up and yet they're both reluctant to do more. Like it's happening for the first time.

Maybe this is the point.

He wishes he could remember what happened between them, to make it right. Maybe to make it _all over again_. But everything is a blur. There's only Bonnie's smile and her hands around the glass of liqueur he poured her as they spoke comfortably in the soft light of his room.

"I hope you can forgive me," she says in a whisper against his ear.

"There's nothing I have to forgive you for."

#

Damon looks at her like she's a ghost. Stares for long moments, tries to bite at her with irony, but always fails to keep her eyes.

It's like she broke an unspoken rule for a game she likes to forget they started. There's something amusing, and very sad about this.

It's like there's a question inside his mind which bumps from wall to wall in his skull and when his hand closes around her wrist she gets goose bumps because she can read in his eyes his question: _Why_?

And more than anything she wonders why he cares. She is tempted to write it off like his usual competitiveness with his little brother but he looks at her like she just walked out on him and she's suddenly scared of what that might mean.

#

It doesn't happen again. He begins wondering how it could happen in the first place, but he stops caring soon enough.

When Bonnie is in the room he looks at the way she moves, tries to see the elasticity of her thigh under her jeans, the feeling of her ankles, her calves, her knees in his hands, but he can't picture that.

Incredibly, now that he's had her, she's become a temptation and when she sighs, in his mind, he can feel the fullness of her soft breast against his chest.

Now that they all found a balance, and Elena can look at them, and they can all be in the same room without fearing a scene, he can't touch the subject. Less than ever can he touch _her_.

#

He's sitting on the couch, his hands pressed at his sides on the cushions when he feels her pinkie touching his as she mimics his position.

He turns his face towards her; her eyes search his with a sort of desperation he's almost indifferent to.

"You're with Damon," he reminds her. Lately Elena needs to be reminded of that a lot.

"I know," she says, "I'm with Damon, I want to be with Damon." It sounds too unnatural even to her own ears but this is the point she must hold on to, she feels.

"That's good," he tells her, before leaving the room.

#

She's wilder than ever when they have sex, which should be fun. Damon though, feels like he's trying to break down a wall. He bangs her into oblivion, hears her cries of pleasure with a sense of frustration. Sometimes he wants to snap at her _can't you shut up?_

Even when she says his name he feels alone, but the scarier part of it is, he's always felt alone with her, didn't he? They always spoke a different language, which she doesn't care to understand and he's too tired to explain.

And fucking her has become exhausting in the worse way possible.

#

"Stop sulking," she mocks him with her righteous attitude, standing in front of him with her arms crossed under her breast and her body caressed in a purple bohemian dress.

"Everything is your fault," it's actually his first time saying that. Up to now, everything was _always_ his fault, after all.

She only grins at him.

"You enjoy making me miserable, don't you?"

Bonnie shrugs, her eyebrows go up, and her green eyes sparkle with some sort of power unknown to him. _Women._ They're witchy creatures by nature, if you add a Bennett in the mix you have a ticket for the afterlife.

"It's not like my world revolves around you," she says, letting his childish accusations slide from her pretty shoulders. He hates the sound of those words more than he can tell and his gums itch. "I didn't do anything to you," she simply replies.

He stares at her for long moments before saying, "Pity."

Yes, she did nothing to him, but it seems like she did more than one pleasurable thing to his little brother and the thought makes him hold his jaw so tight that he can hear a _crack_. Suddenly he's not sure if he's madder because Elena is going back on him, or because Stefan had Bonnie first. Or because Stefan had Bonnie and he never will.

Elena is still irremediably drawn to him. If he plays his cards right he can keep her. The idea makes him feel tired, like he hasn't slept in centuries, but when Bonnie takes one step, and then another, in his direction, his flesh seems to wake up, leaving him startled and desperate for more.

"What's between you and my brother?" he asks, abandoning his half empty glass on the counter top, wishing she would fill the space between them. He _needs_ to know, and Elena is not in his thoughts, now.

"That's really none of your business," she says, cocking her head to the side, before turning her back to leave the room.

He can't help but stare at the subtle swing of her hips. There's something innocent about the way she moves, and yet impossibly seductive.

She's like a siren, calling to him, and resistance was never his forte.

#

She moans against his head, breathing hard as she sucks on his earlobe. His palm cups her breast through the shirt. It's an unkind and starved touch.

He lets himself be guided by the sensation, his mind hungry for clarity and stability. The only way he can give her stability is by impaling her on him, keeping her pinned against the wall of his boardinghouse, right in the hallway where anyone could see them.

In the back of his mind a reproachful voice tells him he's degrading her, possibly exposing her to shame, but she repeats his name with an ecstatic tone and he keeps her there. Legs open and wrapped around him, his jeans falling down a bit more with every thrust.

And when she calls his name, "Stefan," he's already down, in the tunnel of his conscience, in the corners of his dream, and he calls out "Bonnie, oh, Bonnie."

Elena pushes him away and falls to the ground, panties tangled at her ankles, with a growl. It's a painful sound that comes from the loss of his presence, from the loss of his _devotion_.

He stares down at her, taking another step back, "I'm—" Yet, the words won't come. Can he really say he's sorry? Right now he's not, for he feels nothing but longing for the woman he was making love to inside his mind. Elena broke the spell he inflicted on himself and made him conscious of his desire. He can recognize nothing else in this moment, least of all her open wound.

He gasps, licking his lips as she looks at him with her big, wet eyes. There's nothing he can say or do, so he zips his jeans and leaves. Elena can only stare at the closed front door and cry.

#

"Was it good?"

Bonnie is leaning against the balustrade of her porch when his voice startles her, and when she turns, in one flowing movement, her dress flutters, drawing waves in the air.

She looks at him with her patient look and pouting mouth, before she decides that she will amuse him.

"Your brother is everything a girl can dream of," she informs him.

"That doesn't really answer my question," he says, getting closer.

They both hold to the balustrade with one hand, facing each other. When a full minute goes by his eyebrows curve and he asks her, "Is this a game and the one that laughs first loses?"

She actually giggles against her own volition, and he smiles at her.

"So there is a field where I could actually win against you."

"You wish," she says.

"I do wish for many things," he confesses her. His low, hoarse voice surprises him more than it does her. After all, even if she chose to turn blind to this, a part of her was conscious that there was a possibility for something more to emerge.

"Are you here to remind me that I'm the cause of your disastrous love life?"

Damon stares at her, because only now he does realize the truth of her words. And it's _so_ not funny.

"I think I'm here to thank you," he admits, "Mostly."

"What else are you here for?"

That, he can't say. If he tries he's pretty sure he's going to swallow his tongue due to an aneurysm or because he's got to have the worst timing in history.

There's a light smile on her plump lips and her eyes dare him to give her an answer. He can feel the heat of her body from where he stands and he's dying to ask her if it's because of him. He's dying to hear her say yes.

A light breeze brings her scent to his nostrils and he feels his mouth watering up.

_Oh, hell._

_#_

She hasn't been like this with her in such a long time and Bonnie takes it for what it is, because, after all, you must _keep your friends close and your enemies closer._

"It's been so long since we spent a whole afternoon together, without worrying about it being the end of the world or something," Elena says, pushing a lock of brown hair behind her ear, offering a smile which Bonnie can read like it's a treasure's map. If she digs under the X she's going to find many interesting things.

Yet, everything she ever did was for this person. This person that says to value everyone's life the most but hides behind them and watch them fall one after the other after the other. This person that smiles at her as she tries to tie her hands together so that Bonnie won't touch what it's hers.

Elena reaches out her hand, taking hers, and asks her, "Why don't we go out shopping? I saw a skirt that was screaming to be yours," she offers, conspiratorially.

Bonnie guesses the skirt is not the only one screaming to be hers. She grins to herself, internally laughing at Elena's tactic. But manipulation is an art Bonnie is mastering on her own, and now she can see through her friend so clearly. Only, she doesn't know which territory she's defending in such a dirty way.

#

"If there's something I know is _want_," he says, taking a step out of the darkness to stand next to her on her porch, "And she wants him."

She doesn't need to ask him what he means because she knows. She knew long before. It worked like a chain reaction, a game of domino, she pushed one little tile and all the rest came down one by one.

Now she's mesmerized by the decadent, seducing spectacle that's so eager to offer itself to her eyes.

"If you want him for yourself, you should take him now," he offers, his eyes wary, his voice low, strangely tense.

"Do you want me to?" she asks. If she forgets what she must do and just takes Stefan for herself – the realization she can do such thing—_take_, just because she wants to_, take him_, because she _can,_ makes her feel high - she's going to clear the way for Damon from any contending to Elena's heart. Is that why he's asking? Does he want her to do _that_? Does _she_?

Lately she is not sure Elena is deserving of Stefan's love, but sometimes she asks herself how much of her new epiphany about her friend is driven by truth and how much by that little spark they ignited together that morning.

Sometimes she catches herself thinking of Stefan, of his large hands cupping her cheeks, of his hard chest pressed against her breast, of his lap against hers, and she burns a little. Sometimes she regrets what she did. But not enough.

"Maybe I will," she offers back, shrugging and turning from Damon's eyes. She can't look at him in the eyes when she stumbles in that desire and she can't explain herself why. But she knows that no woman choosing Stefan could ever look back with regret.

Her hand is on the doorknob when he speaks again.

"What if I don't want you to?"

She looks back over her shoulder, can actually read the longing and the yearning in his tensed muscles, like everything he possesses is trying to reach out to her. It makes her breath unsteady, her heart go wild. A tiny part of her wants to run and hide from something that's been threatening her sanity from the very beginning, the other wants to stay here and be crushed by his mad, mad heart.

Bonnie turns around, her arms along her sides, her hands turned so that her palms press to the door.

Damon licks his lips, looking like he wants to devour her. It makes her mouth dry.

"What if I don't?" he asks again, "I know I've got no right over you, but—"

"But what?" she urges him.

"But-" he stops again, flashes in front of her, stopping when he's got his hands pressed at her sides, trapping her against the door, his forehead against hers, his mouth one breath away. "_Please_," he begs, as they are eyes into eyes and she can't help but stare at that blue until it hurts to think.

Bonnie looks at his mouth as it descends so very slowly on hers and when she can feel the first contact his cellphone starts ringing and they break apart.

She brings her hand to her stomach, like she can actually feel _physically hungry_ for his kiss.

He grimaces, holds back a _fuck _and takes out his phone from his pocket. She glimpses at the display, reading _Elena_ as caller id and he's got no time to say anything before she opens the front door and closes it in his face.

The phone stops ringing when he crushes it in his hand and leave the remains on her doormat.

_#_

He's composed and polite, standing in front of her with his hands clasped behind his back, and she feels ridiculous while asking him, "What can I give you?"

Something colorful must pass through his head because he looks away for a moment, embarrassed.

Bonnie turns, busying herself with a pot of coffee, even though he will just play with his cup in the end. She remembers his naked body as he slept and her heart races.

"I haven't seen much of you lately," she says.

"Did you want to?" he asks, making her turn, "See much of me?"

She gasps, words escape her, and she's at a point where she didn't think she could be. Her green eyes are wide, drinking him in, and Bonnie knows: she _miscalculated_.

"I saw you a lot," he adds when he receives only silence, "In my mind, I saw you a lot," he explains, getting closer. His hands encircle her waist and she shivers as he bends to brush his cheek against her, "Not always fully clothed, and I deeply apologize for that," he whispers.

She closes her eyes like she can draw his fantasies to herself. Were they wild or romantic? Bonnie must stop herself from biting her own lip and grabs his biceps.

"You know we can't," she reminds him, forcing herself.

"No, I don't," he denies immediately.

"Elena is-"

"My brother's girlfriend," he finishes.

"She won't be for long," she says, pressing her hands against his chest to put space between their bodies.

"It doesn't concern me."

"You know that's not true."

"I want you," he says, turning the ends of her hair hand like he's looking for the hooks that keep him to her. "She can't touch my heart anymore," he explains, "I can feel it turning away from her every times she gets close to me."

His clear eyes are on hers and she feels dirty. Maybe Elena doesn't deserve him, but, does she?

"For how much I try, I can't remember a thing about our night together and I hate it."

"Maybe it's for the better," she answers, her voice as weak as her knees as she tries to steady herself gripping his shoulders, "This way everything can go back as it was before, like nothing ever happened."

His eyes search hers with a lingering sadness, and he tells her "We can never go back."

It is an irrevocable truth and she's defenseless against it. There's only one way to overcome this, and it is by giving in to him.

His tongue in her mouth is hard, demanding, yet his kiss is slow, like he's trying to carve the memory of it in his brain so he will never have to wonder about the taste of her mouth.

He lays her down on the kitchen table the same way a king would lay his queen on the royal bed, and looks down at her with the irrevocability an executioner can display towards the most willing of his victims.

"I've been wondering about the feeling of your skin against my lips," he tells her as his mouth descends along the curve of her neck. Her shirt opens up easily even with one of his hands busy between her legs. He caresses her center with the back of his hand and his knuckles before teasing her with his thumb.

"The feeling of your nipples under my mouth," he explains before applying a sweet suction to the object of his curiosity, as one of his fingers slips inside of her, working around the barrier of her panties.

His mouth drives south, very slowly, joining the work of his skilled fingers. Her clothes scattered around the dining table, as his feast ready for him.

He growls at her tightness as she pulls at his hairs, her hands uncoordinated as her pleasure, rushing through her against her best effort to keep calm. The movement of his tongue so good her eyes fills up with tears as his sweet torture has her helpless.

She's giving up her control and her body to him in a twisted way to make it all better even if she can't. He's going to get the truth and herself; her heart, for a bit, maybe.

His discovery of her body is so slow and intentional. He traces every inch, feeling the blood rush under the pressing of his fingertips, hard enough for her to feel his touch even after he's moved on but not enough to leave bruises. His mouth draws new paths, lets his tongue fill every little space her body offers, like her belly button, the curve at south of her spine, right above her ass, behind her knees where his teeth indulge and scrape. Between her legs, where he drinks of her over and over until she finds herself begging, without knowing for what exactly.

She has three orgasms before he even opens his jeans, and when Bonnie sees his thickness she feels weak and unable to take anymore pleasure. Yet he doesn't rush to it. He moves one hand on her in a soothing, yet seductive caress. He lingers on her stomach, smiling into its softness, then onto her breast. From the way he presses his lips together she can tell his mouth is watering again at their sight and she feels her desire renewed.

Bonnie reaches out, wraps her hand around his hardness and tries to sit up. He helps her gently, as he tries to control his breathing; it's difficult when her little fingers are so tight about him, and she's so intently feeling the texture of his sex under her fingertips.

Stefan puts one hand at the small of her back and uses the other one to angle her pretty face so that he can kiss her again as she pleases him with her hand. He must reminds himself to let her breathe a few times during her velvety strokes but when he comes it's inside her mouth that he growls, and as his hips buckle wildly his tongue mimics the same movement.

They look at each other as they breathe hard; he smiles like a kid that just found what he wished for inside the wrapping he undid; she's startled by what they did, what he's about to know.

"I've been waiting so long for this to happen again," he says, taking her legs and wrapping them around his hips. "I've been wishing for you to give me another chance," he says, pushing her to lay down on the table, starting to slide inside her slowly. She's so tight he must use all his self-control.

"I swear, I will never-" the breaking of her hymen takes him by surprise, and he looks at her in dismay.

"Stefan," she calls, "Stefan," is all she can say as he fills her body, hard as a rock, still as a statue.

He gasps, growls, and hides his face in the crook of her neck. She offers the curve of it in the desperate, silent attempt to ask for his forgiveness. Because now he knows, what she always knew.

"You were never mine."

It's out there for her to hear it, for him to fight it.

He slides out of her, "But I can change that, can I?" he asks, as he drives in, in a fluid, slow motion. Once again her body clenches him tightly, making it hard to think.

"Say it, Bonnie," he tells her, staring into her eyes as he moves in and out of her, with a maddening crescendo which has her panting and melting around him, "I can, can I?"

"Yes," she swears, "Yes," she repeats as he takes her, again and again.

If it is a lie, he doesn't want to know.

#

_She watched him empty his glass sip after sip, counting the minutes it took for his system to surrender to the drug. She had used a mixture of flowers and herbs which would not arouse his suspicions because the liqueur they were drinking was an herbal one._

_She had seen it once between Damon's bottle and when Stefan offered a drink she had requested that one, saying she was curious to taste it. He had smiled, glad to be able to grant her wish and they had retired to his room so that they could speak more freely. It was hard to share a house with your ex-girlfriend and your brother, when they were untactful enough to kiss in every room, without much regard to his feelings._

_Having him alone in his bedroom was easy enough. She had dragged him to the bed once he was unconscious and undressed him, carefully choosing where to leave each bit of clothing she took off him, drawing in her mind their walk to his bedroom so that Elena would see it too._

_Her car was parked right in the middle of the alley of the boarding house. Impossible to ignore. Her absence in all the other rooms so unavoidable, it was impossible to forget._

_She was counting on Elena's jealousy, on her petty reaction. She had intended to fuel that with every word she spoke that morning, with every inch of skin she showed her, to make her question herself and revaluate Stefan. And when the thought of Damon came knocking at the door of her conscience she ignored it. _

_Elena was so easy to play, and Bonnie found out just how good of a player she was, too, because Elena played Stefan's feelings just as much as Damon's. She didn't know if it was her vampire nature or if it was just Elena._

_But she did see it, and suddenly a regurgitation of possessiveness and dark justice had clouded her mind. And as Stefan looked at her with desire, and Damon tried to change the rules for their unspoken game, she saw her dark heart, her opposite feelings, the poor remains of what she was holding onto so blindly._

_And now, she was in the middle of it all. Waiting for justice to fall on her neck like the blame of an executioner._

_She had good intentions._

_#_

He's taking the first step on the stairs when he sees Damon appearing behind him. Stefan looks over his shoulder, sees the tension in his shoulder, feels the trembling dismay coming from him like an aura. Yet his hard eyes speak of determination.

"You should take a shower," he says, "You smell like her."

Elena will not like it, they both know it, and they wonder what will she do, when she will see how far they've gone, how lost they both are to her.

"I know, I like it."

Stefan takes another step, and then another, before Damon speaks again.

"You never did before," he says, sounding surprised, because he realized it only now, "You never smelled like her," he says again, "It never happened-"

"It did," Stefan says, turning around, "It did happen, now."

Damon doesn't look at him, too concentrated on following the hints, like every smell and every word is a crumb of bread and he's Tom Thumb. He's getting the whole picture and Stefan wants to punch him.

"She did it all so that Elena would go back to you," he says, relived that it wasn't desire which put her in Stefan's bed. He shakes his head, amused and sinisterly proud of her. "She played us."

"Maybe," his brother concedes, "But I am the one who can't go back anymore."

Damon's satisfaction sobers up instantly, and he knows it's the start of a new war, a short lived one, for Bonnie is not Elena. Her decision will be one and unchangeable.

"I can't either," Damon says.

"I know."

#

Her skin is hot from the shower as she rubs the body butter on. She smells like honey and moroccan rose and she lets the towel fall to her feet as she picks her lingerie from her drawer.

She feels the power of femininity pulsing in every cell of her body, and she's not scared of her allure anymore. She will not hide it, soften it, be ashamed of it. She's not going to compare herself to Elena, or stay behind for her sake.

She wears a pair of old pajama pants, a white tank top and wraps herself in a sweater to protect herself from the chill air of the night. When she steps out on the porch he's already waiting for her. Hands into his pockets, legs crossed at the ankles. His low eyes travel up to her face, and he does his best to grin at her, pushing back the idea of her and Stefan. The questions eating away at his soul.

"I've been waiting for you," he says.

"Oh, you know what they say" she shrugs, "The wait increases the pleasure."

His eyes darken and she's pretty sure she can catch her reflection in them.

"You're not funny."

"I didn't mean to be," she says, pushing back a strand of hair from her forehead. When she takes a step to the balustrade and it falls right back, Damon reaches out to push it away himself and she freezes. His fingers linger, though.

"I didn't mean to be a lot of things," she offers.

He takes away his hand but she's fast to catch it, and when he slowly moves his eyes to look at her he counts the seconds backwards, _ten, nine, eight,_ like it's some kind of magic formula that will drive fear away, because he doesn't know what he will find.

_Seven_, six. They played an unspoken game, and they cherished an unloved love, and he was blind and she was too. _Five._ But Stefan did not play, and he loved and loved more, and he had his eyes on her from that moment on. _Four, three_. And maybe what his brother and her shared was closure, or maybe it was the beginning, and he is going to know now, when he watches in her eyes. _Two_.

In just about a moment. In just about a moment.

_she turns  
with that look in her eye  
bite your tongue to stop it  
and change the topic  
moves in, she touches your arm  
and it's too late for logic  
too late to stop it_

_the end._


End file.
